An italian on the list

Published on Le Parisien by Henri Vernet, 8 May 2024 at 19:00

Foreign candidateson the lists for the European elections can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Sandro Gozi, from Italy, is sixth on the list led by Valérie Hayer for the presidential majority, and is defending the idea of a transnational ballot.

As citizens of the European Union, we share the same European passport, so a German or Spaniard living in France can vote there and stand as a candidate in local elections (and vice versa). But it is within a strictly national framework that we will be electing the 720 Members of the Strasbourg Parliament on 9 June.

As for the presence of foreign candidates on the lists for the European elections, which is authorised and logical – at least for the pro-European parties – it can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The Italian Sandro Gozi, who was Secretary of State in the government of the centrist ex-President of the Council Matteo Renzi in Rome, is the only one (along with the Belgian Caroline Roose at EELV) to appear in an eligible position: sixth on Valérie Hayer’s Macronist list.

Elected by a landslide in 2019 (in 22nd position), he owes his salvific promotion to François Bayrou, a heavyweight in the bitter struggle to put together a list to which the polls promise at best 16 or 17 seats. Twenty years ago, the MoDem boss co-founded the European Democratic Party with the Italian centrists, of which Gozi is Secretary General. ‘ I’m a happy European from France, I embody Macron’s European project’, he assures us. The proof?’ Among our forty-eight proposals is the election of MEPs on transnational lists, rather than country by country ‘.
This is not a new idea; it was already advocated by Renaissance/Renew in 2019. It is gaining ground: the European Parliament has adopted a draft law providing for the first 28 MEPs to be elected in this way. It will now be up to the leaders of the 27 Member States to put this small step into practice. It’s not certain that they will do so, given the nationalist winds blowing across the Old Continent. ‘ It would, however, strengthen the links between citizens and Europe ’, argues the most French of Italians.